Wednesday, August 27, 2014

What
is the difference between The Riddler and The Joker? Quite obviously The
Riddler is an obsessive-compulsive type who grew up with a love of solving
puzzles. Simply getting away with a crime would be no fun; he has to pose
riddles that give someone as smart as Batman the chance of catching him. But
The Joker is a full-blown psychopath, showing no sign of conscience or empathy
as he goes on his killing sprees. When he is not depressed between his manic
episodes, his goal is to conform the world to his own tortured persona.

Travis
Langley in his Batman and Psychology: A
Dark and Stormy Knight has given us a primer on abnormal psychology. The
quite obvious hook is that while most psychology books are rather dull, he
develops case files on each major character in the Batman universe, thus making
it an entertaining read for anyone with an even moderate liking of the comic
books. So while recalling the escapades of King Tut and Mr. Freeze, you’ll
learn about the difference between biogenic and psychogenic amnesia and the
problem of love turning into objectification along the way.

Although
Langley’s work is not meant to be a history of the different versions of the
characters, he gives surprisingly detailed thumbnail sketches of how they changed
through the golden age, silver age, etc. of comics.

So
if you want a primer on abnormal psychology that is not dry as dust, pick up Batman and Psychology. You’ll be glad to
know he concludes Bruce Wayne/Batman is not mentally ill. If he were, what
would that say about so many of us who admire him?

Friday, August 22, 2014

Kari
Byron, Tory Belleci, and Grant Imahara have been axed from the long-running
everyman science show Mythbusters. They
were sometime referred to as the “B team” of the show, but I often found their
antics more interesting than those of the “A team.” There was the time they ran
a convertible beneath a semi, only to have the convertible launch over the
protective berm of the property and almost land in the street outside. Or the
time they lit some coffee creamer, only to run in panic when they saw the size
of the explosion.

Self
and Grant Imahara

You
may be surprised at my calling it a science show, since they also did gonzo
stunts. But they often showed how real science is done. Instead of visualizing
people in white coats inside a lab, think of how they would measure the lift of
toy helicopters or set sensing devices around an explosion to see at what
distance it would be fatal to a human body.

As
I stated in a previous post, writers often have to write on subjects they don’t
know much about. If some of your characters need to speak in a scientific
manner, watch several episodes of Mythbusters.
You’ll soon have your characters speaking about “proof of concept,” the need “to
establish a baseline,” and setting up markers “to measure in precise increments”
in a convincing manner.

This
may jar some people, but I’m actually not that sad to see Kari Byron go. She
was kind of too coy on camera. I much preferred Jessi, the stuntwoman they had
on for a few episodes, including the one where they tested Captain Kirk’s
cannon against the Gorn.

Monday, August 11, 2014

In
the 1700s, Mary Draper Ingles has everything torn away from her when Shawnee
Indians massacre her Virginia settlement. She watches horrified as a neighbor’s
baby has its head smashed open, then her mother’s scalp is waved in front of
her. Pregnant and with two young boys, she is taken captive and forced to ride
and walk far beyond where any white people have settled. All she can do is
memorize landmarks along the way, although she receives hostile looks when she
glances back to see what a course back would look like.

She
gives birth in squalid, unclean conditions. Only her dignified air makes the
Shawnee leader respect her enough to grant her some material comforts as she is
forced to continue the journey without pause, along a river larger than any she
has seen before. Mary is determined to escape and return home, hoping her
husband is still alive. But how can she make it all the way back on foot, all
those hundreds of miles?

Follow the River by James
Alexander Thom is historical fiction based on the incredible true story of Mary
Draper Ingles, who walked an estimated eight hundred miles along the Ohio River
and through the Appalachian Mountains.

Thoms
describes the ordeal in vivid detail. In this passage, Mary recovers from her
numbness after the massacre:

Her skin began
to tell her of the humid valley air, the trickling of her own sweat, the
crawling of wood ticks, the bites and stings of mosquitoes and no-see-ums, the
rubbing of the horse’s hair against the inside of her knees, the whip and drag
of leafy branches across her face and shoulders.

This
description continues as Mary passes through scenery beyond her imagination,
encounters Shawnee culture, plots her escape, and makes the arduous journey
back.

I
highly recommend Follow the River as
an engrossing account of an unlikely survival story, and also as a slice of
life that exposes a violent period of American history. I have to make a couple
of qualifications: If you didn’t like the part about a baby’s head getting
smashed open, there are other gory details as the Shawnee torture other white
captives. And for some reason, Thom has Mary daydream about having sexual
relations with her husband, in too much detail. I have no idea why he did that,
but it makes the book for adults only.

Monday, August 4, 2014

Pip
is an orphan brought up in grinding poverty, but he’s good-natured—he even
shows kindness by taking food to a violent escaped convict. But being raised by
a semi-literate blacksmith, he has no expectations.

One
day he is escorted to a large manor house on the whim of the owner, Miss
Havisham. To say that Miss Havisham is eccentric is like saying the surface of
the sun is a touch hot. She constantly wears her wedding gown from decades ago,
when she was jilted on the day of her wedding. And the drawing room still has
the wedding cake and other preparations from that very day. For that matter,
the entire house has been preserved as it was in that one moment, when she
received the letter telling her it was over. But not exactly preserved—rotting.

In
the midst of all this is Estella, a young orphan just like Pip. Pip has been
brought to play with her. But Estella has been trained by Miss Havisham to
exact vengeance on the male half of the race. Pretty, flirtatious, but with a
heart of ice, she educates Pip in the finer things of life while only showing
him coldness. Poor fool, the young Pip falls in love with her.

One
day Pip is arbitrarily sent away by Miss Havisham. Not content at being an
apprentice blacksmith, Pip dreams of someday being a gentleman while hammering
away. Then a lawyer shows up out of the blue. He informs Pip he has great
expectations. An unnamed benefactor has decided to sponsor Pip to live the life
of a gentleman. He is to leave for London immediately.

Pip
thanks Miss Havisham and goes off to London, where he joins a gentlemen’s club
and begins the difficult transition of becoming mannered. But what price lurks
behind this sudden change in fortune? And when he sees Estella again, she is
busy flirting with the most unworthy of these moneyed young men. Can he reach
her heart?

This
2012 version of Great Expectations is
a lush, dark, beautiful retelling of the tale. One of the standout scenes is
when Pip (Jeremy Irvine) arrives in London in a foppish-looking small town
concept of a gentleman’s suit, only to be greeted by the fresh butchery needed
to feed the city, street urchins trying to sell him all manner of things, and
lots and lots of mud. Then the thuggish behavior of the young gentlemen in the
club, who are assured of incomes they never earned, fairly bursts off the
screen in their thoughtless boisterousness. Other period details, from moss on
a gravestone to the gems in Estella’s hair to the impending approach of the
great paddlewheel of an oncoming ship are so perfectly portrayed that they stay
imbedded in the mind’s eye. Some of the early scenes with young Pip and Estella
are lit by genuine lamplight, which shows the effort taken to be authentic.

Although
Jeremy Irvine and Holliday Grainger as Estella do their best, they are
overshadowed by the older stars. Ralph Fiennes is unrecognizable as the convict
Magwitch, and it looks scarily uncomfortable to be within several paces of him
in his dirt-caked persona, muck and saliva hardening in his beard. And Helena
Bonham Carter is just disturbing as Miss Havisham with her deathly pallor. She
can dismiss Pip with an abrupt “Goodbye” that surprises, or seem to become lost
within her wedding gown. She dominates almost every scene she’s in, even when
she’s being wheeled around in her chair while lying almost horizontal. The one
exception is when Holliday Grainger comes into her own, and as Estella, tells
Miss Havisham, “You made me.”

This
version stays surprisingly faithful to the book without any harm to the pacing.
This is a movie worth clearing an evening for, to watch the macabre and
splendid aspects of Victorian life compete with each other in this Dickens’
classic.

For
those of you who saw the 2011 version on PBS, with Douglass Booth as Pip,
Vanessa Kirby as Estella, Ray Winstone as Magwitch, and Gillian Anderson as
Miss Havisham, I’ll make a few comparisons. This is also a beautiful version,
but instead of staying as close to the book, it was somewhat more of a
reimagining. That is, they would take certain moods and themes from the story
and find their own way of expressing them in a compelling way.

I’d
have to say the newer version has the better cast. Gillian Anderson was impressive
as Miss Havisham, but she played her in a scary way, rather than as an
eccentric. I’ll make an exception for Ray Winstone. It’s true that Ralph
Fiennes is quite the chameleon in his acting skills, but Ray Winstone has a
face that’s been “lived in,” and he makes the better convict Magwitch.

The
end of the 2011 version has more of a CliffNotes version of the fates of Miss
Havisham, Pip, and Estella. It’s best to see this version first, than the 2012
version. It’s kind of like making sure to go to Disneyland before going to
Disneyworld.

Friday, August 1, 2014

To
continue from my previous post, back on the 4th of July I was in an
area park. I saw a feature new to me: a large mobile, several feet high. It had
model airplanes attached to it, and they moved as the mobile moved. This was an
incredibly neat thing to see.his was an
incredibly neat thing to seeones. ttached d as the mobile moved.

But
when I walked up to it, I saw the models attached weren’t airplanes. They were
military-style drones. I was astonished.

I
guess this is what happens when the Boeing Corporation is a major local donor.